


Lost and Found

by Kiwi1018



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Ben Solo Deserved Better, Bendemption, Episode X, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Force Dyad (Star Wars), Happily Ever After, Happy Ending, Kinda, POV Ben Solo, POV Rey (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey Deserved Better (Star Wars), Reylo - Freeform, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, reydar - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:36:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28409355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiwi1018/pseuds/Kiwi1018
Summary: Getting battered-and-bruised-but-DEFINITELY-still-alive Ben Solo into the X-wing had been tough, but now Rey has them both safely off Exegol and headed for the Resistance. If only he didn’t look quite so much like Kylo Ren...~~~~~~
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 16
Kudos: 58
Collections: TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics, The Rise of Skywalker: Fix-It Fic Edition





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, it’s been one year since TROS. Look how far we’ve come, but still fighting the good fight to make things right for Rey and Ben.  
> Happy New Year, Reylos. However 2020 was for you, I hope and pray 2021 will be so much better.

Getting Ben into the X-Wing had taken a herculean effort of both physical and Force strength, (what little of both she had left), as well as seeming defiance of at least one of the natural laws of physics (Force not withstanding). But he was in no condition to pilot the TIE, and given the current conditions of the battle in the sky above them, it would have made him a target. And so, in the end, Rey had managed. What other choice did she have?  
  


And now they are airborne, rushing free of Exegol’s pull (both physical and Forceful), Ben in and out of consciousness, Rey doing her best with the rusty stick and temperamental switches from where she is wedged, half on top of him, half pressed against the barely airtight seams of the transparisteel canopy. She is relieved, to be honest, that he is mostly unconscious, and she tries very, very hard to focus on the task at hand, and not on the body beneath her. She’d considered putting him on top, but knew there was no way she would be able to reach around him to the controls... and anyway, in the end, they were really more side-by-side.

——

The beeping of an alarm draws her slowly, reluctantly from sleep. It’s a cranky alarm, as old as this ship, hoarse and tinny and clearly reluctant in its one duty, and not letting anyone forget that it had long thought itself retired. Rey blinks in the dim glow of starlines. It’s the proximity alert.

She shifts in the seat, still groggy from exhaustion despite the hyperspace-induced nap, not that there’s really much room in here to move anywhere at all, and—yes — _it’s real_. It is his broad chest under her cheek, his firm shoulder propping her head up almost to the canopy. His shallow breath rustling the hairs on her forehead. His arm slung heavy across her waist, his neck, pale and smooth and firm under her fingertips as she checks his pulse.... He’s really here.

“Ben,” she says softly, trying to wiggle herself enough reach to silence the beeping. “Ben. I need to— scoot your—” she gets an arm free, tingling from nerves left too long ignored, and the alarm falls quiet. Mindful of his broken leg, she shifts her hip, moves his knee, finds the appropriate toggle, then the stick, and with a heave and a shudder and a whoosh of pseudo-motion the starlines fall away, and they’re here: the Ajaran system, with the moon of Ajan Kloss just visible around the horizon.

She tips her head to look at him, and finds that he is looking back: awake, finally, his eyes amber in the dim glow of the dash lights, tinted green by the faint shine of Ajara beyond the window.

He smiles weakly, and it takes her breath away. Whoever he is, was, will be, she will never get enough of that smile - so generous, so unexpected on his face so long hardened by pain and fear and loneliness. And those lips... she’s _kissed_ those lips, and he kissed her back, and what would it be like to kiss them again, and this is _so_ not the time for that, but—

“Rey?” he says faintly, just a puff of breath, a thousand words in that one syllable, filling the damp, chilled air of the cabin, where their joint existence is certainly taxing the aged life-support system. He raises a hand to her face, his thumb just brushing her cheek, and then his eyes flutter shut and he is passed out again, while she’s pinned in place by his arm, now dead weight across her neck, and _honestly_ , he’s really taking up more than his fair share of their tiny refuge.

There’s no way around it - he needs medical help, more than she can give in her current state of exhaustion. They’ll have to go to the Resistance.

If only he didn’t look _quite_ so much like Kylo Ren.

Hair dye would certainly help. Or perhaps a wig... neither of which are available now. Haircut? She puffs a strand of his dark hair out of her face and notices his ears. Maybe keep the hair.

Rey sighs. There’s nothing for it. They‘ll have to dive in and hope for the best.

———  
  


“Ugh. You great wroshyr tree, wake up, or move, or just—”

Rey had always known, objectively, that Ben was a sizable specimen of human male, but it’s really apparent now, as she’s trying to figure out who gets out first, when he’s barely conscious and she is as weak as a baby happabore. She pops the canopy of the X-Wing, welcoming the humid jungle air, the smell of home. Sounds of celebration echo over the Resistance base, and rising over it all—

“Rey!” Finn calls, his voice unmistakable, all relief and welcome and joy.

Popping her head over the edge of the cockpit, she sees Finn and Poe hurrying toward her. She ducks down again, trying one last time to think of a better plan.

Jedi mind trick? It’s worked before.

Bald-faced lie? _No, I had no idea, what do you mean this is Kylo Ren?_

She’s just decided on penitence on his behalf, _please, just listen, give him a chance,_ when the grounding hooks of a ladder clang against the side of the cockpit, followed shortly by Finn’s grinning face.

“Rey!” His exultation is cut short by the sight before him. “Rey? What?”

“Listen, please, I can explain everything, honest, just... please,” she struggles free of the cramped seat, trying to keep herself between Ben and Finn’s blaster, just in case, but Finn shrugs and extends a hand, grasping her elbow, adding leverage to her exit.

“Oof,” she huffs, finally extricated from the cockpit. “Before you shoot anyone, please give me a chance to explain.” 

“Rey,” Finn’s confused. “Why would we shoot anyone? You’re alive! We won! Can you believe it? We won!” Finn backs down the ladder, running over with excitement. “Of course, you know that. Of course you do, you were there. But, we won!” His feet hit the ground and he reaches up to her. “Com’on, get down here, it’s a party - the more the merrier!”

Rey doubts this will continue to be the sentiment once the identity of her co-passenger is made clear, but she’s committed now. She lugs Ben over the side of the cockpit, throwing her last burst of Force control at keeping him from bumping too badly on the way down, and he collapses unceremoniously to the ground beneath the X-Wing.

Poe looks from Ben to Rey and back again. “Um... Rey? Where’d he come from?”

That’s certainly a milder response than she was expecting from Poe. Winning the war has him in a better mood than she’d even hoped. Finn kneels down beside Ben, pushing aside his hair to check for a pulse.

“Let me explain,” Rey begins in a rush. “He came to me, on Exegol. He helped me defeat Palpatine. We wouldn’t have won without him. He saved me, Poe. Please, give him a chance to—”

“Whoa, Rey,” Poe puts a hand on her arm. “Slow down, you’re not making any sense.”

“I know,” she says, breathless. “It is hard to explain, I can hardly believe it myself, but he’s not who he was, he’s changed, he—”

“Rey.” Finn looks up at her, amused and confused and not at all as alarmed or elated as he should be upon finding Kylo Ren passed out at his feet. “Who _is_ he?”

“He’s...” she trails off, finally registering her friends’ reactions. Poe and Finn are... concerned. For her. Curious. About Ben. But not afraid. Not angry.

“You’re not.... you don’t...” She trails off, looking from one to the other, stunned.

_Oh._

_Oh!_

“Oh! Well, this is...” she scavenges around for a generic human name. “Matt?”

She pauses for an objection. Nothing. “Yes. Matt,” she repeats decisively. “This is Matt. He helped me. On Exegol. Yes. That’s it. He came to Exegol, and he helped me. We owe him. Big time. So, I brought him here. Because, as you can see,” she gestures magnanimously, “he’s injured. Very injured. With injuries... that he got helping me. So, we owe him,” she adds once more for good measure.

Finn and Poe look down at Ben, then at each other. Poe shrugs. “Okay. Sure. Any friend of Rey’s is a friend of the Resistance! I’ll go find a stretcher.” He heads off toward the base, and Rey sags with relief.

“Whoa there,” Finn is up and beside her in a heartbeat. “You’re exhausted. Let’s get you both to the medbay. There’ll be plenty of time for the full story later. For now— we won!” He hugs her tight, and then he’s the only thing holding her up as she collapses against him.

“We won,” she repeats against his chest, the long-suppressed tears overflowing as she clings to her first friend. “We won.”

————

Maz lets herself into the medbay that night, and spends a long moment watching Ben sleep beneath the dream-like glow of the med-monitors, Rey half-leaning on the edge of his bed, dozing, holding tight to his hand.

“I told you, child,” she says finally, chuckling to herself, clearly basking in the glow of her own hundreds of years of wisdom and experience. “Aren’t you glad now that you didn’t go back to Jakku,” she murmurs. She shakes her head, turning away. “I told you so.”

And that’s that. 

  
—————


	2. Chapter 2

“So, Matt...” Poe excels at false nonchalance; Ben has figured this out fairly quickly. “You got a family, a home somewhere? Anyone we can help you get back to?”

This is the first time that Dameron and the Traitor ( _Poe and Finn,_ the reminder rings in Rey’s voice) have come to visit him, at least since he’s been awake. Rey’s been in and out over the past few days (though _in_ every night, he’s pleased to know, sleeping in a spare cot alongside his own bed), and they certainly could have stopped in for this casual visit while she was _out_. His opinion of them rises, slightly. But then again, maybe they’re a little afraid of her, too.

“No,” Ben says simply.

Rey reaches over and deliberately takes his hand. He’s surprised, but pleased. A declaration. One Poe doesn’t miss, and doesn't seem particularly thrilled about. Ben squeezes back, just in case there’s still any doubt.

There isn’t.

“Right...” Poe says slowly, clearly not the answer he was hoping for. He frowns, glancing at Finn, who shrugs as if he’s out of ideas. That didn’t take long.

“Okay then.” Poe’s also quick to adapt, Ben’s learned. Another admirable trait, unfortunately. Poe scrubs a hand through his thick, dark hair. “Well... do you... do anything?”

“Do... anything?” Ben raises an eyebrow and feels Rey’s amusement bubble between them. He has no intention of making this easy for them. Rey is still holding his hand. He’s feeling pretty confident about his status here.

“Hey buddy, we all gotta pull our own weight around here. So, yeah, you know, what skills do you have? Jobs you can do. Can you fix things, or fly things, or, I don’t know, cook?”

“I don't cook,” Ben confirms flatly. Rey’s amusement vibrates the Force around them. The corners of Finn’s mouth twitch even as he looks around, confused. But Poe is still waiting.

Ben considers. What does he do, now? If he’s serious about staying (which he isn’t. But for now, Rey is, so...) he’ll have to do something.

“I can fight,” he finally offers. Rey coughs, choking on a laugh that rings through their connection like bells on a winter morning.

“You alright, Rey?” Finn asks.

“Fine. Fine,” she waves him off, still covering her mouth.

Poe is frowning at Ben skeptically. “You can? Are you any good at it? Because,” he gestures vaguely along the bed where Ben is barely able to sit up, trying to encompass his array of still-healing injuries.

“Matt saved me, on Exegol,” Rey puts in.

“So you’ve mentioned,” Poe says, “with, oddly, very little detail. Ready to fill us in yet,” a note of irritation creeping into his voice, “on how, exactly, _he_ , saved _you_?”

“Poe,” Finn says quietly. “We agreed not to push her. About what happened with... you know.”

“I’m just askin’,” Poe says innocently, turning to Rey. “Anytime she wants to tell us... anything... I’m happy to hear it.”

“He was amazing,” Rey says simply, glancing at Ben, her face neutral but her eyes bright as starshine. “Amazing.”

Ben swallows, breath caught in his throat under the warmth of her gaze. Then he blinks, and turns to Poe.

“I’m amazing, apparently.”

“Right...” Poe shakes his head. “Well. Fighting. Okay. That’s at a bit of a lull right now. And you have some healing to do. So, in the meantime... anything else?”

“I’m a fair pilot,” he offers, bolstered now by Rey’s affection.

Poe shrugs. “Well, that’s something. But to be honest, what we really need right now is a radar technician. We got comms coming and going across the galaxy all hours of the day and night, it’s a lot to keep them all straight.”

“Sure,” Ben finally takes pity on him. “I can probably figure that out.”

“I’m going to need him too,” Rey adds. “To help me. With... training. Jedi business,” she shrugs apologetically.

“This guy’s a Jedi?” Finn exclaims, surprise and suspicion, and if Ben’s not imagining it ( _he’s not_ ) more than a little envy.

“No!” Rey says quickly, high and sharp over Ben’s equally emphatic rumble, _“No.”_

Finn and Poe stare at them, both somewhere between amused and alarmed. Then Finn retreats, holding up his hands in surrender. Poe looks to each in turn, then sighs. “Right. Jedi business. Okay. We’ll schedule that in too.”

“But first,” Rey says brightly, “Matt has to heal. Thanks so much for stopping by. I’ll see you at dinner?” And she stands, ushering them toward the door.

In the hallway, Poe turns to Finn, confused. “What just happened?”

——

The Resistance’s current (and only) radar technician is a short, no-nonsense woman in well-worn coveralls. She is, Ben quickly learns, the expert on most things technical in the Resistance.

“Rose, this is Matt,” Rey sets a box of muffins on the work table as she introduces him at the start of his first official duty shift. She’s taken to accompanying him pretty much everywhere, just to be safe. Not that he minds. “He saved me. On Exegol.”

Rose looks him up and down, her eyes shrewd, appraising, then her face lights up in an energetic smile, and she extends a hearty handshake.

“Welcome, Matt! I’ve heard all about you... well, what there is to hear... which isn’t much... Rey has been a bit... sparse, with the details...”

Rey stays mum, her smile bright as ever, and Rose sighs. “Well! I hear you’re a radar tech. That’s so great, just what we need right now. I’m swamped with...” and she’s off and running, turning to the nearest comm station, chattering away about transistors and resistors and commcompressors, and Rey bows out with an encouraging smile, and before the end of his shift he’s rewired four calcinators, calibrated twelve transcapacitors, and made his second friend in the Resistance.

———

Ben was still unconscious, barely settled in the medbay, when Chewbacca left the base to take Lando home. But upon his return, it’s barely a hot minute before he hears the story of the mysterious dark-haired stranger Rey has dragged home from Exegol, and barely another minute before he’s barreled through the base and is standing before Ben.

The old Wookiee stares at him a long time, inscrutable as ever, dark eyes searching his soul as they had in his childhood, and Ben swallows hard over a throat dry with remorse and regret while Rey clutches his hand and looks imploringly at Chewie.

Then Chewie roars, high and anguished and choked with things that cannot be changed, and Ben is enveloped in his arms, near to crushed, smothered in Wookiee fur that smells like _home_ , and he’s the only being left alive who still makes Ben feel small. Feel like a child again.

 _You’re home,_ Chewie warbles, over and over again. _You came home._

————

It is several months later, when Ben has been promoted to senior radar technician (an appointment he takes an unseemly amount of pride in, though he admits it to no one), and he’s settled into his new life with surprising ease: work, eat, rest, repeat, with Rey by his side, and a camaraderie among the others on base like he’s never known before, when an earthquake far below the surface of their base sends a shock-wave searing up, up, up to the surface, cracking into the overhanging cavern that serves as main hangar and main gathering place. Ben is, of course, hard at work keeping the radar apparatus fine tuned and tempered, and the tremor in the ground is only a precursor to the tremor in the Force, as he sees what’s about to happen, and he has no other choice.

Without thought, without plan, he reaches out and suspends the rockslide before it crashes to the ground, where it would bury who-knows-how-many Resistance crew, and half their hangar besides. And then the rockslide is halted, boulders and dust and gravel hovering like a cloud, a fog frozen over the base. Rey meets his eyes with a nod, _all or nothing,_ and he sweeps his hand to the east of the base, toward the canyon that cuts through the training course, and the landslide follows, redirected, tumbling down and away with a rumble louder than the launch of their largest ship, and all the eyes on base are watching him.

And then the air is still, and everything has become clear.

“Um, Rey?” Finn says into the quiet. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure that Matt is—”

“Ben Solo!” Rey cuts him off. “He’s Ben Solo now.” They need to know, to understand, before anyone does anything drastic.

“Rey,” Poe approaches her carefully, his voice sad, but wary. “I don't know what Leia told you, but... Ben Solo is dead. He died years ago, with the Jedi.”

“Solo...?” Finn says, catching up. “Like, Han Solo? They had a son?”

“Yes!” Rey exclaims. “Yes. Their son. Before he was anyone else, he was their son. And they loved him.”

“But he died,” Poe says again slowly, as though explaining it to a stubborn child.

Rey takes Ben’s hand. “He did. But then he came back. It’s him.” And Poe squints at Ben, searching for something half-remembered, long-forgotten.

“Leia’s son?” Poe says finally. “You’re Leia’s son?” Hope and disbelief wrestle across his face.

Ben nods solemnly, waiting. For judgement, for condemnation. For mercy. Grace.

“Then why’d you tell us his name was Matt?” Poe turns to Rey.

Her eyes widen in surprise, and she looks at Ben. The truth flashes between them. _They don’t know. They really don’t know._

Ben steps forward. “I didn’t think I’d be welcome,” he says truthfully. “I wasn’t here, when she needed me. I should have...” he looks at Rey. “I should have come back sooner.”

A light dawns on Poe’s face. “Wow. Ben Solo, huh? Good to see you, man. Wow. Crazy.”

Ben decides to roll with it. “Thanks. Thank you. You too.”

“You were knee-high to a bantha last time I saw you,” Poe continues. “Trailing around Yavin 4 with that stuffed... what was it? A nerf?”

“A tauntaun,” Ben grumbles, flushing pink from his nose to his ears, and Rey falls even more in love. “It was a tauntaun.”

“So...” Finn says slowly. “I was right? He is a Jedi?”

—————

Rey and Ben are married a week later under the shelter of the _Millennium_ _Falcon_ , a warm rain falling all around them.

——————

When word gets around, as word tends to do, that native son Ben Solo has returned from beyond the grave, Chandrila extends an offer to host a new Galactic Alliance, in celebration of his resurrection, and in honor of his dear mother, who dedicated her life to freedom throughout the galaxy. This is fortuitous, as the Ajan Kloss base hasn’t been the same since the rockslide, and honestly, it’s about time some system stepped up.

And so it is that Rey, Ben, and Poe find themselves in Leia’s alcove-turned-shrine, sorting out what’s worth moving to Chandrila and what should be left to complete its degeneration in peace, when Poe uncovers an old style holoalbum. Leia’s family photos. He offers it to Ben, who shakes his head, indicating that Poe should do the honors. 

They watch as Poe flips through the pictures, a chronological compilation of Leia’s life. Posed archival stills of a regal couple with dark hair and wide smiles, backdropped by a verdant, mountainous planet that can only be Alderaan. There’s Han and Luke, younger than Rey can even imagine them being, and Chewie, ageless as ever... and then a boy with dark hair, prominent ears, and a broad smile passes before them, growing rapidly from infant to toddler, grinning child to serious teen.

“Wow,” Poe says, pausing at a picture of Ben, his expression so like what they see on his face regularly now, when he’s reached his limit with Rey’s exaggerated affection or Rose’s teasing. “It’s Leia’s life. Her family.”

Rey smiles at the picture of her husband, so young, so serious. _You’ll be back,_ she tries to tell him through the years. _Don’t give up. You’ll get lost, but you’ll be found again. Don’t give up._

Poe clicks to the next picture, and for a moment they’re all confused. It’s in grayscale, grainy and nowhere near the quality or condition of the other holos. A long-range intelligence capture, it shows a tall man, all in black, a crackling cross-guard lightsaber in his hand. His face is turned toward the camera, intense dark eyes and jagged scar visible even through the static-streaked recording. He wears no helmet.

“That’s—” Poe gasps. “That’s Kylo Ren.” He sounds confused, alarmed even. “Why does Leia have a picture of Kylo Ren in her personal album?”

Rey clutches Ben’s hand, still and sure and ready for whatever comes next, and they breathe together.

Poe clicks back and forth through the photos, putting together the last pieces of the puzzle. _Ben... Ben... Ben... Kylo. Ben... Kylo... Ben._ Then he looks at Rey, and finally at Ben, who meets his gaze, silent and steady, but there is tension in the clench of his jaw, the bob of his throat. 

“Well...” Poe says finally, his voice unsteady, a bit out of breath. “You know what they say... keep your enemies closer, and all that.”

“And perhaps, one day, you’ll be enemies no longer,” Rey says quietly.

Poe nods slowly. “I guess that’s the point, huh? Isn’t that why we fight? To someday have peace.”

He clicks the album off and hands it to Ben.

“Thank you,” Ben says, and not just for the holos. 

Poe sighs, shakes his head, still in disbelief. “If only she could be here to see this.”

“She is,” Rey says quietly, her gaze in the distance, surprise and gratitude and relief in her voice, and Ben smiles. He sees her too. “She knows.”

———————  
  



End file.
